Fifty-to-One

Barrone thumbed the card in Charley’s direction. “Let’s see.”

Charley reached out, turned the card over. Two of spades.

“You’re a lucky man,” Barrone said.

“Sometimes,” Charley said. “Just not at cards.”

29.

Robbie’s Wife

The car pulled to a stop at Fulton Street, near where the Fish Market would be opening for business in just a few hours. Already there were trucks pulling in and offloading crates that stank of fresh catches and seawater. The driver came around and opened the door. Barrone gestured for them to get out first. He followed, wincing as he got to his feet. He was not a young man and was carrying a lot of weight on those not-young knees.

“Come upstairs,” he said.

“If it’s all the same to you,” Charley said, “we’d just as soon be on our way—”

“I said come upstairs,” Barrone said.

“Why?”

“You want your guns back, for one thing, and I’m not handing them to you loaded. Apart from that—have you gotten a look at yourself?” He grabbed hold of the back of Charley’s neck, steered him over to one of the limo’s side-view mirrors. Tricia followed. Charley fingered the stubble on his chin as though surprised to discover it there. “You can’t go after Sal looking like a bum and smelling worse—not if you want to have a serious chance to get close to him. You need a bath, you need a shave. And you need some sleep—look at your eyes. I’ve seen smaller bags on a Pullman car.” He snapped his fingers at the driver, a young man who looked like he’d grow up to be Barrone’s shape if he lived long enough. “Eddie, clear out the room on the top floor.” The driver nodded, headed off.

“Mr. Barrone,” Tricia said, “it isn’t that I’m not grateful—I’d dearly love a good night’s sleep. But my sister’s in trouble now. We can’t just leave her in Nicolazzo’s hands while we lie down and take a nap. We’ve lost enough time as it is.”

“All due respect—Trixie, is it?” Barrone said. “If Sal wanted Colleen dead, she’s dead already. If she’s alive now, she’ll still be alive in five, six hours.”

“You sure it’s not that you’d prefer her dead,” Tricia said, “because she’s been squeezing you?”

“What, for a few bucks and a car? I don’t like it, but I don’t want her dead for it.” Barrone waved an arm at her. “Anyway, look at you. You’d be no use to her the way you are now. You can barely stand up.”

It was true enough. She was listing like a tree in loose soil.

“Now for the last time,” Barrone said. “Come upstairs. Or would you rather do it at gunpoint?”

“No, no,” Charley said. “We’ll come.”

Inside, the building was spare, obviously less a home than a headquarters. There was a kitchen on the first floor, but it was full of burly men with empty shoulder holsters, some downing beers as they read the newspaper, some running oil-stained cloths through the pulled-apart mechanisms of their guns. The rooms Tricia and Charley passed as they climbed the stairs were under-furnished—a sectional sofa in one corner, a bare table in another. There was, Tricia thought, no woman’s touch; which made sense, since as far as she could see, there were no women.

Barrone stopped climbing after two floors. He leaned on the banister and watched as they continued without him. “Go ahead,” he said. “There’s a bathroom on the top floor. Eddie should’ve put out a razor for you. We’ll talk strategy in the morning.”

When he’d dropped out of sight at last, Tricia leaned in close to Charley and whispered. “What the hell are we doing? We’re working for him now?”

“We’re breathing,” Charley said. “One thing at a time.”

“But he expects us to kill Nicolazzo for him. We can’t do that!”

“You don’t know what you can do till you try,” Charley said.

Tricia’s feet felt like stones and her head felt even heavier. Just keeping her eyelids open was an effort. “We’re not killers, Charley,” she said. “I’m not, anyway.”

“The police think you are.”

“So I might as well be? Is that what you’re saying?”

“I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m too tired to think.”

They turned the last corner and made their way up the final half-flight of stairs. The floor they came out on was a little better decorated than downstairs, with floral wallpaper and moldings up by the stamped-tin ceiling. An open door at one end of the short corridor led to a bathroom and Tricia could hear water running into a tub. Through the door at the other end she saw the corner of a bed. Halfway between two bales of hay and unable to choose, the donkey starved to death. That wouldn’t be her fate. Let Charley take the bath; she’d sleep first.

She staggered into the bedroom. Eddie was there, loaded down with an armful of blankets and stripped-off bed linens, and there was a woman in there, too, loading another few pieces onto the pile. She was tall and thin and looked to be in her middle thirties, with the close-set eyes and narrow axe-blade of a nose that stamped her as one of the Barrone clan. She gave Eddie a little shove toward the door and he headed out with a glance back at her; he seemed a little moony-eyed, Tricia thought.

“Go on,” the woman said, and a few seconds later they heard him tromping down the stairs.

Charley came in quietly beside Tricia. The woman, who’d paid Tricia no attention whatsoever, eyed him up and down with considerably more interest.

“Scruffy, aintcha?” She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. “You’re papa’s new pet? Eddie told me he’d picked up some strays.”

“You’re Mr. Barrone’s daughter?” Tricia said.

“Among other things,” she said, not taking her eyes off Charley.

Tricia scoured her memory for the daughter’s name, the surviving daughter—the dead one was Adelaide, she remembered that. “Renata,” she said. “Right?”

“Points to the little lady,” Renata said—to Charley. “She might win herself a kewpie doll yet.”

“And you’re married to—” Tricia caught herself.

“Robbie Monge, that’s right,” Renata said, brightening. “The famous bandleader. Read about us in Hedda’s column, did you?”

“Among other places,” Tricia said. She didn’t like this woman, she decided. Didn’t like her at all, and wouldn’t have liked her even if she hadn’t been sizing Charley up like a dressmaker eyeing a bolt of satin.

“Why no ring?” Charley said, nodding toward her hand.

She lifted the hand, stared at it as though noticing for the first time the absence of a wedding band. “I wore one for a while,” she said. “It made my finger itch.”

And she tilted her face down to give him an up-from-under stare straight off the cover of Real Confessions.

“Awful nice to have met you,” Tricia said, emphasizing the awful more than the nice. “But we’re pretty tired and we’ve got an early day. Maybe you could let us get some sleep?”

Renata didn’t take her eyes off Charley. “What is she,” Renata asked, “your kid sister? Or just your kid?”

Tricia’s mouth dropped open, but Charley put a hand on her arm before she could say anything. “Mrs. Monge, Trixie’s right, we really do need to get some sleep. If you wouldn’t mind...?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t mind,” Renata said. “I wouldn’t mind at all.” On her way out the door she patted Tricia’s forehead. “Pleasant dreams, honey.”

The door clicked shut behind her.

“What a hussy!” Tricia fumed. “She’s a married woman!”

“Didn’t you tell me she’s a widow?” Charley said.

“Yeah, but she doesn’t know that,” Tricia said.

“How do you know she doesn’t?” Charley said.

“If she does, that’s even worse,” Tricia said. “Her husband’s not even buried yet—”

“Robbie didn’t sound like a prize himself,” Charley said. “Anyway, that’s not the point.”

“Oh? What’s the point, then?”

“The point is she’s Barrone’s daughter, and we might need her help. We certainly don’t need to get into a